What’s the point of being an adult if you can’t do what you want?
I said this to my kids the other week. We were in a park. I was feeling sad. Bogged down by life, feeling the weight of responsibilities and never-ending tasks. It was a lovely day, but I had been arguing with my husband. I felt alone
This past year has been somewhat of a downer. The weather in San Diego was “for shite”, as my Irish friend would put it. Cloudy, rainy, gloomy, and cold. At least to our Southern California standards. I would have needed the sun to cheer me up since it wasn’t just the weather that had been dark.
Both my parents died within 5 months of each other. Nothing out of the ordinary. We all die someday, and both of them were well in their 80s. First, it was my mom who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for 16 years. It took me months to start feeling like myself again after her passing. I wrote a blog “The Gift of Grief” that described the fall and the rise of my emotional world after this. And then, when I finally felt like the grief was letting go a bit, we lost our dad. Oof. A double whammy. I guess the Universe figured that since I’ve already acquainted myself with the loss and letting go, let’s continue with the same theme.
As an astrologer, I curiously noted how all this happened while my progressed moon was in Pisces. For those not familiar with the term, the progressed moon describes the themes and environment that color your life in 2.5-year cycles. When the sign of your progressed moon changes, we float into the next phase and experience a different flavor for a while. These past two years have been my chance to look at the world through Piscean goggles.
I talked to an astrologer two years ago saying I was slightly worried about going into this Piscean phase. It doesn’t suit my personality, the lightness of my Gemini self. I’m not sure if I’ll enjoy being reclusive and introverted, boundaryless, fluid and expansive, not getting a grip of reality, or being reminded of my fears and mortality. She comforted me by saying that this is a great time to get more comfortable with this part of myself. To learn to be more vulnerable and awaken that water element in my life. I wasn’t convinced. I’m not a good swimmer and all this water has made me feel like I’m drowning at times…
But as the good ol’ Gemini and a rising Libra, I have the capacity to see both sides of the coin, or look at the bright side of the street, acknowledge the silver lining in the clouds, and so on (I love sayings, proverbs, and expressions). So, although I’ve faced challenging aspects during these two years, the Piscean progressed moon has also brought me positive experiences. I now have more acuity to recognize the intuitive hits in my body, that sends chills down my spine every time there is a message coming through, or when something significant and meaningful is being shared. My dreams are vivid, and I have learned to preserve my mental energy by getting comfortable being in introspection. I am more certain of how it feels to be connected to my higher power because I’ve seen what it looks like when I’m totally disconnected. I’ve taken time to think about the boundaries of my personality and ego. Who am I? What am I? What is the purpose of all this? And the challenges I have overcome have allowed me to expand my perception on pretty much everything. I even started reading poetry and was wondering how come I never got into poetry before… You can read more about my insights on poetry in my other blog posts.
In addition to being in my Pisces progressed moon, I’ve had my South Node being bombarded by Uranus, the great awakener, as Michael Lennox describes it. Transiting Uranus brings sudden changes into certain areas of our lives, and those changes are there to help our personality to grow. And when it’s hovering around my South Node, I have been faced with changes in all things familiar. Changes to what I already know how to do. Disrupting the comfort zone and shaking up beliefs and stories coming from my upbringing, conditioning, background, and family karma.
I always see Uranus in the Tower card of the tarot. Lightning hits the castle and people are flying, dropping to their deaths. Flood takes over, and cleans out all the loose things that you don’t need anymore. A disruption that leads to letting go of the crap that is not good for you. It is time to unload the burden. The lightning comes from the gods as the great awareness and illuminates the solid foundations that you have, and you realize that the castle of you won’t break with the turmoil of the outer conditions. And like in the Tower card, my foundation stayed intact, even when my parents, the two people that defined so much of it, were physically detached from this plane.
So here we go. Thank you, universe, for giving me some practical examples of how these events can be reflected in one’s astrology charts, or even in our tarot cards.
But getting back to my point here. I’m there in the park, watching my kids play, sitting in a small beach tent that I had set up, sipping a Long Drink (go look it up), escaping the pain of life a bit. Oh, did I forget to mention? Pisces is the master of escapism. One may succumb to a higher use of alcohol, immerse themselves in work, projects, gaming, or anything that detaches them from reality that is so full of pain, loneliness, and fear.
I must admit that there have been times in the past two years that I have truly wanted to escape. One of these occasions happened after my mom’s passing on a day when I felt sad and tired. Oh, so tired. Wanting to feel anything other than what I was feeling, I thought of escaping. I realized that I’d always wanted to go to New York but had never had a chance to go. How long would it take if I just drove there?
In my self-centered depression, I was wondering if anyone would even miss me while I’m gone. Or did I think about that? I don’t know… I was not thinking of anyone else. I was immersed in my own sadness and felt that I just needed to get out. I set the destination to New York in my car’s GPS and was considering taking off and driving into the sunset. In practical terms, the sun sets the opposite way since I would have been driving East, but it makes a nicer mental image. But instead of driving off, I drove to the middle school, elementary school, and high school. Picked up my kids and drove them home. No one knew anything about the plan that had surfaced. A couple of days later, we’re going for dinner, and I needed to use the navigation system. My destination was still set to New York and my son asked me, why do you have New York in your GPS? I told them that I had wanted to check how long it would take to drive there from San Diego. I sensed some suspicions from the backseat. Not sure if my white lie was accepted as truth.
I guess I still didn’t get to my point. Let’s try again. So, in that park, I was overtaken by dark thoughts. A few weeks prior, I had witnessed my father passing away, holding his hand while he took his last breath. Both my sisters and my dad’s “girlfriend” had been there too. This lady was a companion for my dad in his last years. The greatest help and comfort, while my mom had already been out of the world of awareness in the hospital. My dad had called himself a widower of a living person.
The last time I talked to my dad over FaceTime had been a trigger for me to go. He didn’t look that peachy. So, I had booked my flights thinking I would be hanging out with him, potentially for the last time. And the last time it was. I barely made it to Finland at midnight when my sister calls me at 5 am to rush to the hospital. I never heard my dad talk to me anymore since he was already unconscious when I got there. But he was still alive. This time, I had made it. Unlike my mom, who passed away without me being there.
And I guess we did ‘hang out’ with him in his hospital room until the late afternoon that day. Reminiscing, singing, laughing, crying, and sharing stories. My dad had his final party with four ladies that loved him around him. I felt that I should have been more at peace since I was there to witness his passing, but I think no one is really prepared to see someone close to you die in front of your eyes. It may not be the peaceful, angelic, and divine release that we see in the movies. It can be rough, with labored breathing gradually getting slower, at times stopping, and then starting again with ever-widening gaps, a person’s body getting paler and cooler by the hour while it’s trying to preserve the functions of the major organs at the center of its core. And then, one long gap and breathing turns gurgled. We all know it’s very close, we all take his hand and try to keep ourselves together. One last breath and the person’s face falls back. No muscle tone anymore. He’s gone.
I tend not to wallow in the darker side of things, but death can be a visceral experience to witness. It is a transition. There he goes now. Now we’re just holding on to a vehicle that his soul used in this lifetime. He is somewhere else. My dad has left the room. Or at least he has left his body.
These experiences have a fundamental impact on you. There is an odd space that inhabits you when one of our roles is wiped away by death. The great transformation. I am never going to be someone’s child. I will never behave, talk, act, and feel the way I did in the presence of my parents. While at the same time, it’s a feeling of freedom, it is also a feeling of emptiness. How do I fill the void that this part of my personality, now gone with the passing of my parents, has left behind? What do I fill it with?
And here in the void, I was thinking about my life. On that day. In the park. And I wanted to fill some of the space inside me. I asked myself again: ‘What is the point of being an adult if you can’t do what you want?’.
In my kids, I see the desire to be independent, have money, and self-rule to do what they want. They can’t wait to be adults when they don’t need to listen to us and do what we ask them to do. They want to grow up fast so that they can decide for themselves. Do you remember when you wanted to get out of your parent’s house? To experience your own life without all the boundaries, rules, and expectations? To fill your fridge with whatever you wanted to eat? To do things your way?
So we go about our lives, gaining education to get a job so that we would have money to do and accrue the things we want. We strive to be independent, working up to the promised land of adulthood. Only to realize that now that we are adults, we are bound to so many authorities over us. If it’s not the boss at work, it’s the worry of finances, it’s the mortgage company, it’s the bills that need to be paid. It’s the relationship that we need to tend to, it’s our children that need us, it’s our own excuses, the fears, and the lack of courage to step out of the comfort zone that someone else defined for you. It’s the conditioning, the societal expectations, and the rules about the way we are to behave as grown-ups, as parents, and as spouses. Who the hell wants to be an adult if we find ourselves tied to our lives?! Prisoners of our own doing. In the cage that we worked so hard to build. What is the point of the journey to get what you thought you wanted just to realize that when you finally get there, it feels like the opposite of freedom, independence, self-rule, and decision-making power?
And there and then I decided to take that long overdue trip to New York. I’ve always wanted to go, but supposedly never had the time or money, or it was complicated, or the kids would not like it, etc. Obviously, my husband would be suspicious and jealous if I wanted to go by myself. I would be selfish to spend that much money just to go and have fun without the rest of the family. I kept telling myself whatever the typical arguments we use when we feel that we can’t do something. But not anymore, I decided.
I informed my family that I am going. Not with all of them, but by myself. I’ll escape my life for a couple of days and go see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I wanted to experience being in New York. I needed to let myself see that I’m not a prisoner of my life, that I can do what I want. Just because I want to. And I don’t need to make it mean that I am selfish, or a bad wife, or a cold-hearted mother, or that I don’t care about my responsibilities or my family. I can spend some money to enjoy my life the way I want to enjoy it. I don’t need to explain and justify. I’m an adult for God’s sake, am I not!?
So, I told my kids that mom has always wanted to do this, and now that it’s my 47th birthday, I will give myself this trip as a birthday gift. With both of my parents gone, I realize that life goes on. Sometimes so fast that you forget to live. My children understood, even though they didn’t like to have me gone. All my family understood and encouraged me to go. Even my husband, who was not 100% sure I would come back.
And it ended up being a great trip! I paid homage to the United States as an immigrant by visiting the landmarks I had always wanted to see. I honored my freedom by partying until the wee hours. I went to see a Broadway show, had wonderful dinners, met friends over cocktails, danced the night away, and felt the exhilaration of adventure by navigating this huge city without anyone else but myself to rely on and without anyone else to please or cater to than myself. No schedules, no obligations, just pure free-floating fun.
What I wanted to convey with this long post is that you are allowed to do what you want to do! You’re the adult in your life, and you have the power to give yourself the permission to experience whatever it is that you want to experience. Don’t let your own stories, or anyone else’s stories and expectations tie you down and keep you from living. We are free when we allow ourselves to be free. You are the master of your life; your life is not the master of you.
